


Your Ghosts

by kotter



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Angst, Gen, Meditation, Mild Horror, One Use of Swearing, References of Harm to Children, Scopophobia, it's 11:24 pm and i have a D in biology, partly inspired by A Snapping Sound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 04:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21155927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kotter/pseuds/kotter
Summary: Impa warned Link about ghosts of the past and unfinished business.Some things don't stay buried.





	Your Ghosts

When Impa warned Link about the ghosts, he hadn’t understood. 

Impa’s old eyes had bored into his. He was almost taken aback by her insistence. “The ghosts of the days long past won’t be kind,” she explained. “Don’t let them take over you.” She urged him to meditate on his past, to try to remember. 

He had complied, almost reluctantly, but Paya was so sweet to him. She murmured kindly to him, reassuring his concerns about the older Sheikah’s words. “She’s seen a lot, Master Link,” she told him, holding his rough hands in her smooth ones. “The past has hurt her, but she means no harm. She’s living in a different world than us, she sees everything so much differently.” 

Link had understood that. She lived through a great tragedy, waited for a century only to send a young man off with the few resources she could offer, as opposed to the armies and knights of old. Who knows what one hundred years of reflecting has done to her mind? She meant well, but her scars lingered. 

The meditation was a slightly uncomfortable experience. It was like jumping into the river that led to the Dueling Peaks Stable. It was a cold, unpleasant shock that pulled him with a strong current, he could feel unseen entities sitting and moving around him, those could be the rocks or fish in the river. Paya seemed quite at peace, though. She simply sat and breathed. 

Link struggled to stay afloat as whispers and images pulled at his attention, yanking him as he floundered, trying to comprehend what was happening. Voices reached out to him, a jumble of male, female and genderless sounds that greatly varied in length, pitch and volume. Light sobs trickled into his ears before warping into a smooth, mocking voice. Red and gray flickered in and out of existence like fireflies, bleeding together into new images. 

His mind was a troubled mess of old memories and new experiences, like leaping off a cliff in a free fall with his paraglider, which shifted to wind disturbing his hair and clothes as a mass shot upwards past him, a condescending voice filled indistinguishable words in its wake. Sparkling water in the plateau had blobs of murky-shaded color swimming in it, looking so jarringly out of place but familiar that it frightened him. The light was hitting it all wrong, it had no features to swim with, he could tell when it was looking at him but there was no face. 

All the while, Paya just breathed. 

Link did as much as he could, but eventually he became too frightened by the chaos residing in his brain that he took the time to think instead. Thinking was always an afterthought in his life, ironically, as he always preferred action to waiting. He knew that was called “stupidity” by some, but he knew he wasn’t stupid. Stupid people don’t survive in the wild, or escape from Yiga. When his adrenaline began flowing, he did was he felt was right and had yet to be disappointed with the outcome. 

As Link stopped meditating as much, he could Impa’s eyes following him. He always greeted her with a nod, but her gaze made him feel like he was a disrespectful child that was about to get punished. 

Impa’s eyes were bad enough, but one thing drove Link crazy: her inaction. She sat and stared, tight-lipped and did not speak when he approached her. He visited her house less and less, knowing that her judgmental gaze waited just inside those double doors, and she had found him guilty. 

Paya remained unaware of the tension, frequently inviting him to meditate with her or for a cup of tea. He was supposed to be a hero, but he was too scared to visit an old woman’s house. Late one night, Link decided he had enough. He tiptoed out of the inn, leaving Ollie his rightfully owed rupees, and dashed out of the town. 

He felt plenty guilty for leaving without saying good-bye to Paya, but he dared not attempt to enter Impa’s house after the sun had set. So he ran, down the slope, out towards the vast grassy field in the distance. The castle sat at the northernmost area of the field. 

A weight lifted off Link’s chest that he hadn’t realized was there. The turmoil in his head soothed and quieted. He was free, he was back in nature, he was able to roam and travel and fool around. Maybe I had been sick of staying in the town all the time.

Time would tell. 

/

He arrived at a stable seven hours later, with a few more scratches and some broken equipment. The stable owner barely had a chance to greet him before he breathlessly interrupted, “I’d like to take Rupee out.” The owner complied, bringing him his gray mare. Link grinned and offered Rupee a few apples as a “sorry” for leaving her halfway up the southern side of Dueling Peaks. He decided to take a bit more time for himself, meandering around the stable with a wide grin on his face, greeting Beedle like a friend.

As the sun set on Hyrule, Link mounted Rupee and set off for the field in the distance. 

/

Link whooped, throwing his hands in the air. Rupee raced down the hillside, hooves pounding on soft dirt. She swerved past a cluster of large rocks before turning in a large arc and slowing to a stop. Link jumped off, laughing as he led her towards the ruins of a house to rest and hunker down for the night. The night sky glittered overhead, but he wasn’t too worried. Whatever beasts sprung from the ground would be easy to deal with, and besides, the south end of this field was wide open. Sure, he dodged a Guardian or two, but Rupee was worth every rupee from that man in the stable. 

Goddesses, he was glad he sold Pebble and bought Rupee. Pebble was slow and fearful, she didn’t like Link or his tendency to say “fuck it” at all. It was a challenge to tame her and a challenge to ride her. Rupee was swift and smart, she wasn’t scared of a thrill and trusted Link. 

Link left Rupee to nose through some tall grass and two carrots, he beelined for the somewhat-intact house. The surprisingly thin roof had caved ages ago against the surprisingly sturdy walls, creating a nice little nook to huddle in. He prayed to Hylia that there were no foxes hiding in there, he waved a stick in the dark nook a few times to make sure. 

Deeming it safe, Link shimmied in his bedroll and relatively flat pillow, before crawling on it and closing his eyes, the dawn sky softly shining overhead. As soon as Link’s head hit the pillow and his eyes closed, he felt eyes on him. 

Link flinched awake, eyes shooting open. His glance shot around himself, making sure that there were no animals hiding in the gloom. After a quick scan in the low light, he established that there was nothing under the roof. Logically, if nothing was watching him from where he could see, something was watching him from where he couldn’t. 

With a jolt of dread, he realized that there was only one other opening, which his feet faced. He was cornered and blind. He didn’t dare move. The eyes felt so familiar. They traced his body, gazing at every muscle before settling on his face. They stared and glowered. 

Link panicked. 

He shot out of the nook, eyes wild. He was on his hands and feet. To his utmost horror, a pair of eyes was watching him from the opening.

A judgmental gaze so much like Impa’s. But it wasn’t her. 

He hadn’t realized he was shaking until his hands slid out from under him. He was facing skyward, but the horrors didn’t stop there. Another pair of eyes stared at him, stand above his head. He scrambled up, but he couldn’t escape. Eyes opened and closed and gazed and stared. 

Then the chaos of his mind burst to life. The eyes had faces and noses and bodies and lips now, he subconsciously recognized every form. They flickered between bloody and misshaped to clean and formed, red blood and gray plate armor bleeding together. 

Wind blasted him in the face, he could only whimper as the form of a bipedal bird circled above like a vulture, the sun catching its bloodied and broken blue feathers as green eyes scrutinizing him. Voices appeared in a swell, roaring as he turned in the direction of a face. They mashed together, full of demands, questions and loud angry voices blaring in his ears. 

A red fish-like creature inspected him nonchalantly, golden eyes glittering as they shifted between missing, blinded and healed. A tall redhead regarded him coolly, her limbs crusting up with jagged scars before smoothing out. A humongous brown creature examined him, mouth slightly agape with his skin cracking and chipping. 

He whirled around, catching sight of well-dressed ladies and armored males, some not over twelve. A young blonde girl watched him from a distance, he felt his heart break at the sight of her. Mustached men and old women leered at him, handling weapons and cooking utensils. 

His gaze landed on a stout brown-haired man, garbed the same as many men there in plate armor, whose gaze betrayed the only emotion he saw from the things for the first time. 

Disgust. 

Anger. 

Disappointment. 

Low growls echoed in Link’s ears as he stared at the man, petrified. He squeezed his eyes shut, but they didn’t disappear. The man stood in front of him, arms crossed, before he made a contemptuous noise. Link heard a young boy’s voice in the back of his mind, scared and hurt. 

Papa, don’t!

Papa, don’t!

Don’t!

Don’t!

Don’t!

Don’t you dare turn away. Link shuddered in shock, this voice was older than the kid’s. They were still the same person, perhaps with ten year’s difference.

Link’s eyes opened, and a new form was standing right in front of his quivering body. 

Brown boots, tan trousers, a light blue tunic with white embroidery, leather arm guards, blonde hair kept back in a ponytail, blue earrings on long ears, matching blue eyes. 

Sizzling burns on his left side. 

The thing was splattered in mud, loosely gripping a sword in his hand. 

Link’s own face stared back at him.

Something inside Link trembled and broke, and he curled up against the fallen roof, slamming his eyelids down. The bodies of the things disappeared, but their eyes remained. The voices rose to a crescendo, screaming inside his skull, and Link knew no more.

**Author's Note:**

> this entire fic is up for interpretation, I think impa was one of them. paya said she was living in her own world, maybe that world has a lot of ghosts in it or she's senile and/or possessed, this shit wasn't an illusion and now link has traumas to deal with, whoopsie
> 
> I lost my shit here i'm tired and I can't believe I couldn't incorporate a yodeling twilight joke here
> 
> also the formatting on this site is shit, I wanted to have some italics and the site didn't remember that from the copy/paste, and when I tried to change it, it turned into a block of text and i'm not gonna sift through five pages in docs to change like ten words to italics. fuck it


End file.
